ARCHITECTURE AS SOCIAL LABORATORY: Modernity, Cultural Revival, and Architectural Experiment in Peri‐urban China

Abstract

This article engages with the emerging scholarship on experiments in urban and regional contexts to investigate an architectural experiment overseen by Wang Shu, a renowned Chinese architect, in Wencun Village, a peri-urban village on the fringe of Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. In particular, we examine how architectural projects are mobilized to provide a solution to rural decline amidst deepening urban-rural integration. Architecture is supposed to generate knowledge about the relationships between built forms and positive social and cultural changes, in this case involving the revival of rural cultures and identities. Empirically, this article provides a novel study that investigates culturebased interventions into the revival of peri-urban regions in the context of intensifying urban-rural interactions. Theoretically, it contributes to the study of experiments in urban and regional contexts by, on the one hand, correcting the urban bias inherent in this corpus and arguing for the relevance of experiment to peri-urban and rural contexts. On the other hand, while this study reaffirms the importance of using relatively bounded sites of study and controlled parameters to produce plausible knowledge about regional transformation, it equally calls for attention to the contingencies and surprises that exceed and destabilize preconceived theories, epistemological frameworks and hypotheses.

SOCIALLY ENGAGED MUNICIPAL STATECRAFT IN URBAN CHINA? The Shenzhen Biennale as Situated Planning Experiment

“…Abramson (2016) argues that the development of the historic urban neighbourhoods of Quanzhou, Fujian, are a result of 20 years of formal and informal engagements between municipal officials, professional planners and residents. Qian and Lu (2022) show how in the villages of Wencun on the fringe of Hangzhou, Fujian, architectural experiments that seek a middle ground between modernity and tradition are proliferating and incorporating the interests and practices of architects, villagers and officials. Where such experiments are possible, it is ‘not because of the supremacy of the local or an absolute clarity of rights and powers, but rather because of the relative accommodation of complexly interdependent interests’ (Abramson, 2011: 84).…”

“…Chiang (Chiang 2003, cited in Abramson, 2011: 84) argues that in many rural and urban neighbourhoods in China unanticipated, uncontrolled and indirect forms such as privately built informal housing, religious and other community spaces, together with the influences of residents and advocates ‘can often force official planning and development to accommodate local (community‐scale) informal practices in a particularly obvious way’. Such neighbourhoods thus become what Karvonen and van Heur (2014) call ‘urban laboratories’ or situated planning experiments that can incorporate socially engaged experimentation and inspire innovative plans that challenge standard definitions of modernity and growth (Qian and Lu, 2022). Within this, scholars and citizen intellectuals have emphasized the transformative power of research and architecture as part of a social solution that envisages an urban future that does not pit modernity against the preservation of rural cultures and communities (see Ding, 2014; S. Wang, 2018).…”

“…Within this, scholars and citizen intellectuals have emphasized the transformative power of research and architecture as part of a social solution that envisages an urban future that does not pit modernity against the preservation of rural cultures and communities (see Ding, 2014; S. Wang, 2018). For instance, Wang Shu (2018), a renowned architect intellectual, proposes the notion of ‘invisible urbanization’ (Jia, 2017), referring to ‘a process in which modernity penetrates the rural without the need to eradicate rural built environments, while redefining the functions of buildings and spaces in subtle, ‘invisible’ ways’ (Qian and Lu, 2022: 2).…”

“…Seen as such, situated planning experiments also reduce barriers to entry for certain segments of society that have traditionally been left out of the plan‐making process. Over the years an increasing number of societal actors, especially architecture, planning and social science intellectuals, have taken part in situated interventions in urban and rural China (O’ Donnell, 2019; Kochan, 2021; Qian and Lu, 2022). Many of these interventions are executed in partnership with municipalities.…”

Social experiments and the praxis of geographical knowledge production: Emerging architectural practices in urban and regional China

“…Rural China has attracted considerable policy and public attention since rural areas have suffered from the degeneration of material conditions, juxtaposed with the marginalization of vernacular cultures vis-à-vis rapid urbanization. Over the past two decades, the state and also a broad array of grassroots actors have collaborated in myriad efforts to intervene in declining rural communities, and the rationale is to test how changes in the material experiences of inhabitation can translate into social and cultural revival (Lu and Qian, 2020;Qian and Lu, 2022a). In this regard, architectural experiments provide a lens to observe how architecture promotes recursive and ongoing learning about rural change.…”